For more than 150 years, the
Albright-Knox has collected, conserved, and exhibited the art of its time, often working directly with living artists.
This tradition has given rise to one of the world’s most extraordinary collections of modern and contemporary art.
The museum’s collections span some of the greatest moments in art through the centuries, beginning with its first acquisition, The Marina Piccola, Capri, 1859, by Albert Bierstadt—both the first painting and the first work gifted by an artist to enter the museum’s collection. Impressionism and post-Impressionism are well represented with works by leading nineteenth-century European artists such as Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Vincent van Gogh. Cubism, Surrealism, Constructivism, and other movements from the revolutionary early years of the 20th century come to life through significant works by Georges Braque, André Derain, Frida Kahlo, Fernand Léger, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Piet Mondrian, Georgia O’Keeffe, Pablo Picasso, and Alexander Rodchenko.